wish he had
gone with my lord to Mount Siny; I think it would have come to more
good.'

'He has been very attentive to my lord all the time,' said Trueman;
'indeed, he has never quitted my lord night or day; and only left his
side when we heard the caravan had returned.'

'I have seen him,' said Baroni; 'and now let us enter the tent.'

Upon the divan, his head supported by many cushions, clad in a Syrian
robe of the young Emir, and partly covered with a Bedouin cloak,
lay Tancred, deadly pale, his eyes open and fixed, and apparently
unconscious of their presence. He was lying on his back, gazing on the
roof of the tent, and was motionless. Fakredeen had raised his wounded
arm, which had fallen from the couch, and had supported it with a pile
made of cloaks and pillows. The countenance of Tancred was much changed
since Baroni last beheld him; it was greatly attenuated, but the eyes
glittered with an unearthly fire.

'We don't think he has ever slept,' said Freeman, in a whisper.

'He did nothing but talk to himself the first two days,' said Trueman;
'but yesterday he has been more quiet.'

Baroni advanced to the divan behind the head of Tancred, so that he
might not be observed, and then, letting himself fall noiselessly on the
carpet, he touched with a light finger the pulse of Lord Montacute.

'There is not too much blood here,' he said, shaking his head.

'You don't think it is hopeless?' said Freeman, beginning to blubber.

'And all the great doings of my lord's coming of age to end in this!'
said Trueman. 'They sat down only two less than a hundred at the
steward's table for more than a week!'

Baroni made a sign to them to leave the tent. 'God of my fathers!' he
said, still seated on the ground, his arms folded, and watching Tancred
earnestly with his bright black eyes; 'this is a bad business. This is
death or madness, perhaps both. What will M. de Sidonia say? He loves
not men who fail. All will be visited on me. I shall be shelved. In
Europe they would bleed him, and they would kill him; here they will not
bleed him, and he may die. Such is medicine, and such is life! Now, if I
only had as much opium as would fill the pipe of a mandarin, that would
be something. God of my fathers! this is a bad business.'

He rose softly; he approached nearer to Tancred, and examined his
countenance more closely; there was a slight foam upon the lip, which he
gently wiped away.

'The brain has worked too much,' s